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Last post Author Topic: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...  (Read 162587 times)

PhilB66

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #75 on: September 11, 2007, 08:08 PM »
Hi, Are there any truly 100% effective explorer replacements- i.e. such that explorer never then appears in normal use?


I think the reviews should only look at programs that do not use the Windows API. Otherwise, you'll be looking at 'replacements' that are essentially Windows explorer in a new outfit.

PhilB66

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #76 on: September 11, 2007, 08:12 PM »
OK tinjaw - let me feed my ravenous toddlers and I'll create a poll while they're burping contentedly to themselves and are held captive by Dora the Explorer...

 ;D

Dora's Fairytale Adventures is my kids favorite.

urlwolf

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #77 on: September 11, 2007, 08:18 PM »
It's apparently quite hard for an explorer replacement to really be a complete explorer replacement- i.e. to ensure explorer NEVER appears when you don't expect it.

This has more to do with how other programs call explorer.exe. There is a standard way. If they call it in a different way, then it will pop up and not be intercepted by your default file manager.

Re: wiki on filemanagers... good idea. I thought "but there's one!", but I was remembering this:
http://www.softpanor....org/OFM/index.shtml

There's a BOOK on filemanagers!

That site is pretty exhaustive.
They seem to like TC.


Darwin

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #78 on: September 11, 2007, 08:52 PM »
Holy crap, batman! The author claims that the resource has been around for 21 years! Wow. It is comprehensive and I was entirely unaware of its existence. Thanks, urlwolf for directing us to it.

Dirhael

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #79 on: September 11, 2007, 08:53 PM »
OK tinjaw - let me feed my ravenous toddlers and I'll create a poll while they're burping contentedly to themselves and are held captive by Dora the Explorer...

Your poll better have an option called something like "I use all of the above File Managers" ;)
Registered nurse by day, hobby programmer by night.

Darwin

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #80 on: September 11, 2007, 08:55 PM »
Er... on reflection, he's probably meaning that what he perceives to be the original "orthodox file manager", Norton Commander was released about 21 years ago. Seems his website has been up and running since 1997 though... that's still a fair length of time for a continuous web presence.

tinjaw

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #81 on: September 11, 2007, 09:04 PM »
Dora the File Explorer ?  :P What episode? The Two Panes?

tinjaw

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #82 on: September 11, 2007, 09:07 PM »
I mean to ask which one one uses regularly in their day-to-day computer usage at their main computer.

lanux128

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #83 on: September 11, 2007, 09:24 PM »
Your poll better have an option called something like "I use all of the above File Managers" ;)

another option could be "i still haven't decided yet".. :)

Darwin

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #84 on: September 11, 2007, 09:43 PM »
Dora the File Explorer ?  :P What episode? The Two Panes?



Nah... Dora and Boots = The Two Pains (:o did I say that out loud?!)
« Last Edit: September 12, 2007, 12:12 AM by Darwin »

Innuendo

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #85 on: September 11, 2007, 11:14 PM »
dalchina, if you are wanting a file manager that totally replaces Explorer there's no such thing. Directory Opus is as close as you will get. Others have tried, but no one  has gotten as close to completely replacing Explorer as DO. I think the next closest is PowerDesk, but it's nowhere near as good at it as DO and PowerDesk has all but been abandoned anyway.

Darwin

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #86 on: September 12, 2007, 12:26 AM »
OK. The poll is up here.

lanux128

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #87 on: September 12, 2007, 12:33 AM »
as a good DC netizen, i have duly casted my vote.. btw, Darwin it should be Altap/Servant Salamander.. as "Servant" is freeware while the paid version has been changed to "Altap".. :)

Darwin

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #88 on: September 12, 2007, 12:47 AM »
as a good DC netizen, i have duly casted my vote.. btw, Darwin it should be Altap/Servant Salamander.. as "Servant" is freeware while the paid version has been changed to "Altap".. :)

Doh! Who knew? OK, you did... but I didn't. Right, off to correct it now. Thanks for pointing that out.

Darwin

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #89 on: September 21, 2007, 04:24 PM »
Well, I'm using one of those TC 'distros'. It's called ultima prime, and it comes with all kind of plugins and programs to handle basically any file association. it's almost an entire OS in itself. And no, I didn't have to spend any time configuring it; everything worked out of the box.


http://tcup.pl/index.php?l=en


urlwolf - you dawg! I LOVE this! I had an epiphany this morning and discovered how to get a permanent tree view to display on the left hand side of the screen in Total Command/TC UP. That has made all the difference - I can now see  how you have been able to make the move from DOpus to TC UP. I still love DOpus and will retain it as my default Windows Explorer replacement and File Management solution but I could easily see myself switching to TC in the future.

WOW!

Beth UK

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #90 on: September 21, 2007, 04:40 PM »
I have recently strated using AB Commander - as an explorer replacement on 64-bit Vista. It's one of the rare ones that actually has a 64-bit natively coded version. Prior to that I was using my beloved DOpus and TC. I know DOpus supposedly runs on 64-bit (though not supported) but I wanted to experiment a little...

Have to say I have been quiet impressed with AB Commander - and I am not someone who is easily impressed. Fair amount of keyboard support and sync options and runs VERY fast on my system.


Darwin

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #91 on: September 21, 2007, 07:21 PM »
Beth - please add your vote to the File Manager poll (unless you've already done so?) - AB Commander is all alone with no votes (this was one of the first that I tried about 7 years ago - the developers, WinAbility, were responsible for one a MUST HAVE add-on under Windows for WorkGroups 3.11 - FMStepUp - that I still remember with great fondness)...

EDIT: actually, who am I kidding? I'm still running FMStepUp - I <ahem, cough, cough> managed to find a copy of winfile.exe from WinNT4 and both it and the FMStepUp add-in still work flawlessly under XP. It's incredible to realize that a dual-pane file manager WAS a feature of Windows that was slowly phased out....
« Last Edit: September 21, 2007, 09:01 PM by Darwin »

Lashiec

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #92 on: September 22, 2007, 10:56 AM »
O-K, that Ultima Prime has made Total Commander supersede Firefox as the most ridiculously configurable app around. What are all those apps doing inside a file manager window? W-T-F?

Darwin

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #93 on: September 22, 2007, 01:52 PM »
I agree Lashiec. The nice thing is that out of the box TC UP features file previews for just about any file format that you can think of - this is my primary reason for "loving" it.  The other things - media players, chat clients and so on are not essential for me at all, and yet they are more convenient that I would have thought. If nothing else, the ability to copy the TC UP directory onto a thumbdrive and have all these apps configured and ready to go is NICE. I'm using it for now to guide me in configuring TC to my liking. Once I get it configured I'll probably stop using TC UP... For now, I'm just having fun with it!

Lashiec

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #94 on: September 22, 2007, 02:16 PM »
No, actually it's OK, but I mean I didn't know that Total Commander could "execute" inside it external apps. I mean, my statement of living inside TC in the xplorer² mini-review it's actually true! But I wonder if it's legal to distribute such package...

The file previews can be achieved using Universal Viewer. Out of the box it provides a lot of viewers, and as it takes advantage of Internet Explorer addons, it displays a few more in addition. Of course, you could add some of the plugins residing at the TOTALCMD.NET site to add some others, but there's no need for it. The native file viewer built into TC (Lister) provides a subset of the viewers, and it does not provide so much functionality. And both can be used in any file manager accepting external viewers. Deja vu paragraph out ;D
« Last Edit: September 22, 2007, 02:18 PM by Lashiec »

Grorgy

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #95 on: September 22, 2007, 02:43 PM »
Configured out of the box, but its some big box it comes in  ;D

nosh

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #96 on: September 23, 2007, 06:05 PM »
I've been lurking around DC on and off and couldn't help but post my $0.02 (edit: a lot more, in hindsight) on this topic.

I'm relatively new to file managers, sure I had NC running in the DOS days and I've had Servant Salamander on my PC since the Win9x era but I was using plain ol' Explorer (and getting by fairly well) for most of my day to day chores, very rarely using Salamander when Explorer's bad sense regarding copy/move operations got in the way. So while I'm by no means an expert, my opinion is also unbiased coz I don't didn't have any affinity towards a specific file manager.

I narrowed down the ones to try to XYPlorer, Xplorer2, TC & DOpus.
 

 - XYPlorer (despite Zaine and some others saying good things about it, it doesn't have dual panes - a complete no-no for me). Tabs are fine for web browsers where what's going on in one pane is mostly unrelated to what goes in others, but IMHO a file manager needs pane-potential. :)   

 - Xplorer2:
Quickly fell in love with this one, it was familiar coz of the Explorer-like interface and oh-so-functional. X2 is digital kung fu! I have literally been obsessing about it and the neat little tricks you can do with it for the last few days. A tremendously flexible app, sure it's a bit hackerish - you have a separate config utility that you can only run with X2 off(!) and some things have to be edited directly into the registry but I'm not begrudging any of that. 

The down side is that it has its little quirks, harmless but annoying little bugs that should be fixed yesterday and I honestly don't know what its future is going to be coz in a recent radio interview the author talked about being bored with programming and dejected that there was a huge learning curve since MS decided to shuffle all the cards with their gorgeous pig, Vista. Can't say I blame him, coz despite their user community contributions he's mainly a one man show in a very tough game.

Anyhoo, I've been hooked onto X2 despite its niggling lack of polish and hadn't really had the time (or much of an inclination) to really delve deep with either DO or TC despite these apps getting most of the applause. But today I got a great opportunity. I have a couple of folders with over a GB of images each, all the pix are in a single folder, no subfolders. Tiny files going into the thousands. I decided to make a few subfolders and dump 100MB of files into each. X2 managed to do this but after a lot of choking - and I was running in list view (no thumbnails, no preview) - so I saw the perfect opportunity to fire up some the neglected power players and see what they were really all about (I remember somebody associating the word 'industrial' with TC in one of the posts here, now that sounded very promising for some digital heavy-lifting!)

The task: open the main source folder in one pane, an empty subfolder in another, both views 'details'. Sort files on date. Select and move 100 MB of pix into the empty folder. Move all these pix back (coz it wouldn't be fair if the source folder contained less data for the next run) & it also lengthened this rather simple task.

Directory Opus: Decidedly impressive! This here is a major CPU guzzler (it peaked the processor at over 80% on my P4, 3.0 GHZ) but then what the hell is processing power for if not for situations like this? It seemed to be making excellent use of every bit of resource it sucked up - the scrolling was _smooth_, it blew me away by loading thumbnails without any fuss in a folder that had 10,000 plus files. The only time it seemed to slow down somewhat was on copying the 100MB back to the source. Strangely enough, even after the operation it held on to a lot of CPU until I minimized it when it freed up almost everything immediately.

Total Commander: After all the hoopla about this baby I felt terribly let down by the results. I know it's got a bazillion plugins and can do "everything" but if you're lagging behind the competition on fundamentals like selecting and moving files, you cannot call yourself the no.1 player. While selecting the files (Shift-PgDn) the refresh was choppy - the move operation could not be classified as 'fast' - it took about 50% CPU though I wish it'd taken more and made some good use of it a la DOpus.


Just for kicks, I wanted to see how my trusty (but much-neglected)n Servant Salamander would fare against these heavies. Ladies and Gents, this here turned out to be the real power-player! The only one whose raw power deserves the term 'industrial'! SS opened and displayed the folder like it contained 10 files, not 10000. The sort was instant, the file selection and status bar indicator was beyond smooth and best of all, the move operation blew-every-other-result-away!, it even left DOpus looking decidedly clunky.

And that, is the point of this crazy long post.. no matter what your primo file manager is, try Servant Salamander! - I ran these tests with v2.0 which has been followed up with a newer one (which has a few more bells and whisles and starts slower, don't know about the rest - draw your own conclusions about which version is the fastest.) It's probably not something you'd use everyday but when there's some serious heavy-lifting to be done, it'll come to the rescue, and how!

I'll probably spend some more time with DOpus before I decide between it and X2 as my everyday file manager, it'll most likely be X2 (did I mention I ADORE it? :))

As for the lizard, I'm holding on tight. He's not going anywhere!
« Last Edit: September 23, 2007, 06:15 PM by nosh »

Darwin

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #97 on: September 23, 2007, 06:19 PM »
I've never really "gotten on" with Servant Salamander. I've had demos installed at least three times (most recently 2.5 about two weeks ago) and just can't see what all the fuss is about. However, Nosh, you've given me some very pointed factors to look at that I had not considered before an I'll give it another shot!

lanux128

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #98 on: September 23, 2007, 07:13 PM »
As for the lizard, I'm holding on tight. He's not going anywhere!
ah, a fellow salamander user! good post, nosh.. i hope you had added your Salamander vote in the on-going file-manager poll.. :)

i was like you earlier, trying out other file managers to see what i was missing but always went back to Salamander. i think it's a legacy preference because i too was enamoured with NC in the old DOS days and since then the dual-pane concept refuses to go away. :)

btw, now that Altap Salamander 2.5 final has been released (after countless betas), what do you make of it?

Darwin

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Re: File Managers! Windows Explorer replacement! Come one, come all...
« Reply #99 on: September 23, 2007, 07:23 PM »
I'm trying out Altap Salamander 2.5 right now - is there a way to display a folder tree in it? I can't see one... What I mean is a permanent display of the folder structure like Windows Explorer - View - Explorer Bar - Folders option.